The story of living in spite of melanoma, CLND (X 2!), metastasis, vaccines, anti-PD-1, lung removal, and stereotactic radiation. (With a little adenocarcinoma ex-goblet cell carcinoid thrown in!!!) The story of life with family and friends. {Posts under ~ Sew Chaotically, Travel Chaotically, and Chaotic Cookery also housed within! A girl's gotta have fun!}

About Me

Who am I? That is a question the rest of you could probably answer better than I. I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, pediatric nurse practitioner, cook, teacher, gardener, lover of words and music, occasional seamstress, and homemaker. I do have a couple of talents of questionable merit: I can create a decent meal in less than 30 minutes. I can feed and/or soothe almost any baby. And I can remember practically any song I've ever heard. For the rest, I'd rather those who know me decide.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Neuro Neuro who's got the neuro

Well, today we met with a neuro surgeon and neuro radiologist.

The surgeon was not certain the place in my brain was a met but maybe it was but maybe it wasn't.... We have 3 choices. 1. Watch and rescan in about 4 weeks. 2. Do actual surgery, guided with imagery, and cut it out...but he was against this because, since it is so small there is a chance he might not find it easily and then there's digging around and you know.... 3. Do very specialized radiation treatment to the spot now...or later. He was very positive that doing it just a bit later would be ok, because even if it doubled in size it would still be very treatable via that sort of radiation. He wanted to show my films to another radiologist to get his opinion and is supposed to get back with Brent after he does that. And he was to call the neuro radiologist, which he did.

We met with the neuro radiologist who was less hesitant about calling it a brain met. He was pretty adamant that it was, after all, that's what makes the most sense given the history and the appearance on the scans, even though it is so small it is hard to be definitive. Anyhow, he feels he can hit it. The radiation treatment is just as effective as surgery (per both doctors). It is a day long procedure. The side effects are minimal, since it is small. So....we are on the schedule for Tuesday. The limiting factor is the lung surg. We have yet to meet with the thoracic surgeon (our appt is for Thur at 5:30) and everyone agrees that the lung thing has to get gone and fast since it is what probably seeded to the brain in the first place. Everyone was very nice and are willing to keep me on the Tues schedule until I see the thoracic surgeons and see what we need to do there.

Comic relief for the day...Brent surreptitiously brought Reese Cups for me to have between MD visits. However, my loving genius stored them in his shirt pocket, so that when he got them out to give them to me...a mushy, chocolate bomb went off in his fingers and splattered his entire shirt with chocolate.

Cross your fingers for good scheduling options. It seems to me that I could probably do the brain radiation better now than later...since at this time I am pain and cough free. After a lobectomy it sounds more uncomfortable than it does on all the already obvious points.